A computer system includes various tiers, each tier including various nodes. As an example, a computer system may include an application tier, a middleware tier, and a database tier. The application tier may include various applications. The middleware tier may include various web servers and/or logic servers. The database tier may include various databases.
Each communication with a node is associated with metrics and/or attributes. A metric includes information that is counted and/or measured for each communication. Examples of metrics include a response time, whether there was an error, and an error type. An attribute includes information about a particular characteristic of a communication with a node. As an example, a particular characteristic of a communication with a node may be a browser that is used to communicate with the node. Attributes of the browser may include a browser family and a browser version. Another characteristic of the communication may be a geographical region from which that communication originated. Attributes of the geographical region may include a continent and a country.
Various trends may exist in the metrics over a time period. Various correlations and/or relationships may exist between the metrics and the attributes gathered from a computer system. Some trends and/or correlations may be useful to developers for identifying problems with the computer system and/or determining improvements to the computer system. However, other trends and/or correlations may be irrelevant to the developers.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.